I am pedalling towards the snow-capped peaks of the Atlas Mountains in northern Morocco with Richard Branson just in front. The road, a series of hairpins and switchbacks, is steep and getting steeper. The old boy may be 75 this summer but so far he’s not flagging.

It’s hard to reconcile the sinewy, Lycra-clad figure on his Rocky Mountain Altitude bike with the young man described by teachers 60 years ago as “a bit lazy, a bit thick” before he left school to start his first business — a magazine called Student of which he was publisher, advertising salesman and reporter. He interviewed Mick Jagger and opened a mail-order vinyl record store that grew into Virgin Records, then Virgin Megastores. The original hippy entrepreneur, he